Spectrobes preview (DS)

If you love Pokemon, Disney is hoping you'll love Spectrobes more - unsurprisingly, since Pokemon has been a huge hit and money spinner. Aimed squarely at the younger end of the market, Disney's Spectrobes has many of the elements of the popular Pokemon games, but can it cut it and take Pokemon on at its own game? We've played it, so see what we think. Read the full Spectrobes review in this issue. Click here to read the full Spectrobes preview now!

Spectrobes
Unfortunately Spectrobes has been built on the premise that kids will buy anything. You can tell it’s a title developed by committee rather than a talented individual with a singular vision. It’s not that love and effort didn’t go into its creation, more that its original checklist design smacks of something drawn up by marketing people rather than insightful developers. Got to catch ‘em all mechanic? Check. Nurturing and training features? Check. Creatures with individual properties? Check.

But kids are not daft and while Spectrobes shares many similarities with Nintendo’s excellent Pokemon series it’s lacking in one key area: charm. The game’s two main characters, Rallen and Jeena, are about as charismatic as a mop and bucket. Click here to continue reading the Spectrobes review.

HGZine is a full, free to download magazine dedicated to Sony PSP and Nintendo DS gaming. This issue includes over 30 pages of games coverage, all written by professional UK games journalists. The information on this page refers to just one part of the whole magazine, which features the reviews of Lunar Knights, Phoenix Wright, Price of Persia: Rival Swords, Spectrobes and many more PSP and DS games. Additionally we have the complete roundup of every Final Fantasy game coming to the handheld platforms and 20 things you never knew about Harvest Moon. There's loads more too, and it's all enhanced with video and multimedia. Simply click to download and you will get the complete magazine.

Please note that this magazine is an enhanced PDF file and is therefore designed to work primarily on the PC using Adobe Reader 8. We do not currently produce versions to display on mobile platforms, such as the PSP, as sadly we would have to remove a lot of the interactive functionality from the magazine.